The Middle East and the Media

Ben Wattenberg: Hello, Iım Ben Wattenberg. The conflict between thePalestinians and the Israelis continues to dominate the airwaves and theheadlines. Are we getting the straight story? Are we getting the storystraight? Our guest today has unique qualifications to explore thesequestions. He is Marvin Kalb, former chief diplomatic correspondent for CBSNews and NBC News, former moderator of Meet the Press, former Harvardprofessor, now executive director of the Washington office of HarvardısShorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy and author ofhis tenth book, One Scandalous Story, Clinton, Lewinsky and Thirteen Daysthat Tarnished American Journalism. The topic before the house, ³TheMideast and the Media,² this week on Think Tank.

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Ben Wattenberg: Welcome, Marvin Kalb.

Marvin Kalb: Pleasure to be with you, Ben.

Ben Wattenberg: Sometimes we have guests who are nervous at the idea ofappearing on television. I donıt think thatıs going to be your problem.

Marvin Kalb: No, my problem will be trying to figure out what to say.

Ben Wattenberg: Well, weıll see how that works. Tell me first something ofyour background if you would, a little thumbnail sketch.

Marvin Kalb: Thumbnail sketch: I was a journalist at two networks, as youpointed out, for thirty years.

Ben Wattenberg: Where were you born?

Marvin Kalb: New York City. And educated in New York at City College, thenwent on to Harvard for graduate work. I was teaching Russian history for atime and then went with the State Department to be an interpreter andtranslator at the American Embassy in Moscow. Came back, continued for myPh.D., was hired by Murrow for CBS and then spent thirty years with thenetworks.

Ben Wattenberg: The great Ed Murrow, a legend.

Marvin Kalb: By the great Ed Murrow himself.

Ben Wattenberg: The legendary Ed Murrow, right.

Marvin Kalb: Absolutely. And then for the last fifteen years, Iıve beenassociated with the Kennedy School at Harvard as a teacher and as thefounding director of the Shorenstein Center.

Ben Wattenberg: All right. You have spent a lot of time in the MiddleEast.

Marvin Kalb: Yes.

Ben Wattenberg: And thatıs obviously our topic before the house today. Isthere some hope in what is going on? How do you read the whole situation?

Marvin Kalb: My gut feeling overall is that we in this country now faceprobably one of the most delicate, difficult moments in the foreign policythat I have tried to cover over the last fifty years.

Ben Wattenberg: What does a foreign correspondent working out of the Arabcapitals, working out of Israel, what do you pick up that doesnıt get on theair? Some of the background that isnıt a news lead. You had mentioned, Iheard you talk at some small dinner the other night, about what thePalestinians are like, what the Arab leaders think of the Palestinians, andI wondered if you could .

Marvin Kalb: Well, Ben, youıre right, I have spent a lot of time in theMiddle East and I have been in and out of both Israel and many Arabcountries. And one of the first things that I take with me from each ofthese trips is a quite large respect, not only for the state of Israel and afunctioning democracy in a rather hostile environment. I assume that, and Iassume thatıs going to be for a long, long time. But when you look at thathostile environment, what you find ­ a couple of things. One, thePalestinians are, in my view, probably the brightest of all of the Arabs,the most hardworking, the most dedicated, the most deserving of a break,which they have not got as yet from their political leadership. But theyare most deserving as a people of a break. Then there is the relationshipbetween the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. And what Americansdonıt realize often is that there is an acute hostility between thePalestinians, I think because theyıre so energetic and hardworking andsmart, and so many other groups in the Arab world. Do we have time for astory?

Ben Wattenberg: We do have time for a story. I mean, one of the reasonsIım doing this this way is that, and weıre going to get to it when we talkabout the media, is that we donıt have a point A and point Z. So you saysomething and some I want to hear your views on this so please, continue.

Marvin Kalb: Okay. Well, let me tell you a story. When I was in SaudiArabia on an assignment many years ago, there were two people who were veryimportant to me. One of them was a Saudi prince who was my minder. He wasa Princeton graduate, very handsome, very tall, wearing the white gown. Andthen there was a young Palestinian who was the key person for me on helpingme with equipment, on making sure that I got a line between Riyadh andLondon. A terribly important person, I liked him very much, respected him agreat deal. And when I knew that I would be leaving the following night, Isaid to my minder, I said, ³You know, I want to take²..

Ben Wattenberg: Your minder, the prince.

Marvin Kalb: The prince. ³I want to take you and Muhammad out for dinnertomorrow night.² And I saw a look across his face. And he said, ³Let mecheck.² And he came back in about an hour and he said, ³I donıt thinkthatıs possible, Marvin.² I said, ³Why not?² He said, ³Well, itıs just notpossible.² I said, ³Thatıs not good enough. You have to tell me why itisnıt possible.² And I said, ³You go back to your minder and you tell himthat Iım unhappy with that arrangement and letıs find out if I can do this.Itıs only a dinner. Come on.² He came back a couple of hours later and hesaid, ³Iım terribly sorry, itıs not going to work.² I said, ³You owe me anexplanation on that.² And he did that night provide it. And it was ­ Icanıt give you the exact words but Iım awfully close to the rhythm of whathe said ­ he said that ³we Saudis have in mind that one day the Israelis andthe Palestinians are going to get together. And if they get together,theyıre going to dominate this part of the world and we will never, neverallow that to happen.² All over the Middle East, the Arabs donıt like thePalestinians. You arrive in Damascus at the airport and thereıs a straightshot into town, takes about a half-hour to get there. As youıre approachingDamascus, on the right there is a large camp, refugee camp, filled withPalestinians. It has been filled with Palestinians now for fifty years.The Palestinians in Syrian society have no opportunity to advance ineducational opportunity, in economic opportunity, to set up a business, totravel. Theyıre stuck in those camps. And so we have to ask ourselves,ifyou ask about reporters in this area, I think a good reporter has to havein the back of his mind when youıre talking about the Arab world now inflames in support of the Palestinians, to what degree, I mean how is one toexplain, on the one hand, antipathy, dislike, hostility, jealousy toward thePalestinians and, on the other hand, this sort of collective embrace of thePalestinian cause? It seems to me that the Arabs are incrediblyhypocritical. If you love the Palestinians so much, Mister Saudi Arabia,open your borders to them. You got an awful lot of land. Syria, all of theother state, Egypt ­ open it up. But they donıt. They keep them in camps.That is outrageous. They keep them in these camps as a political tool, as away somehow of using it as a certain point in the ultimate negotiation withIsrael.

Ben Wattenberg: The Bush doctrine indicates that the United States is goingto pursue terrorism all over the world, wherever it may be for as long as ittakes. Is this current Palestinian-Israeli conflagration a part of that?

Marvin Kalb: That, of course, is the most difficult question to answer.And I think that the President really has two doctrines. Heıs got the largedoctrine that is post-Nine Eleven that you just mentioned, a global struggleagainst terrorism, and they added the phrase, with a global reach.ı

Ben Wattenberg: Right.

Marvin Kalb: And then thereıs Bush doctrine two, with a small two. Andthat is the doctrine enunciated by the President just within the last weekor so in which he articulated what is the American view and attitude towardthe Israeli/Palestinian crisis. And that second doctrine is, at this point,in potential collision with the first doctrine, because if you read thefirst doctrine, clearly, I think what it says is that any state harboringterrorism, any leader of a state harboring terrorists or terrorism, thewhole operation is somehow or another a terrorist as well and is going tofeel the full anger and might of the United States at a certain point. Nowwhere does Arafat fit into all of this?

Ben Wattenberg: Thatıs a good question. Whatıs the answer?

Marvin Kalb: Well where does he fit into this if in fact doctrine one isthe full doctrine of Bush and not Bush one and two. If itıs one, thenArafat fits into that category and the United States ought to join forceswith Israel against the terrorists.

Ben Wattenberg: Right.

Marvin Kalb: But the two are in conflict because the Palestinian issue, forsome of the reasons weıve talked about, is something different and distinctwithin the Arab world. And right now it is so powerful a force, anemotional force, that the Arab streets, so-called, are in a state of somerebellion at this point. And the State Department and now theAdministration are afraid that the street rebellions - and theyıre reallydemonstrations and of angry people, no doubt about that ­ that that will endup toppling Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and strategically the U.S. cannothave that. And that is, I think, the reason to explain the tactical energybehind the Bush Administrationıs effort now to lean on the Israelis, to getthem to pull back and to get them to engage in a negotiation with thePalestinians.

Ben Wattenberg: Okay. Your new book, um, One Scandalous Story, which Iread over the weekend, and it is a great read.

Marvin Kalb: Thank you.

Ben Wattenberg: It is really interesting. It is about what I guess hascome to be called a journalistic firestorm,ı where one story just knocksover all the pins.

Marvin Kalb: A stampede.

Ben Wattenberg: A stampede, right. Now, we have one now going on but itısnot a domestic one, itıs not a salacious one, itıs not a gossip one, but yetit pushes out everything in its way. When weıre in the middle of one ofthose journalistic firestorm stories, is the American consumer of news, inits current formatformats--being well served?

Marvin Kalb: I donıt think so, Ben. I think that the American public isgetting an enormous amount of information from cable news to the regularnetwork news to newspapers, magazines, radio, the Internet. Theyıre being,the American people are being bombarded with shells and fragments ofinformation. But all of that doesnıt make terribly much sense unless thejournalist uses his or her editorial skills to order that information intosomething that makes sense. Thatıs called the process of editing.ı Thatıswhat a journalist does. There is a passion component in the Middle Eastcoverage that doesnıt exist in scandal coverage. The passion here is thatpeople who think that the press is being too pro-Palestinian believe it tothe bottom of their hearts and theyıre prepared to say that the press ispro-Palestinian. Likewise, many pro-Palestinian people feel that the pressis automatically pro-Israel. That kind of collision has been there from thebeginning of the coverage of the Middle East.

Ben Wattenberg: What do you think, on balance, of the coverage weıregetting, just on that particular aspect of it? Which way is it tilting?

Marvin Kalb: In my judgment, my personal judgment, is that it is tiltingpro-Palestinian. And let me give you the evidence for that. When severaldays ago, week or so ago, the President and the Secretary of State began toask Prime Minister Sharon to pull Israeli forces out of the West Bank, theBush doctrine stated not only Israel pull out of the West Bank, butPalestinians and Arab world, you have to do something to proclaim youropposition to terrorism. He balanced his ticket, but the coverage was notbalanced; it was strictly - or strictly is too strong - it was largely onthe Israeli side, get out of the West Bank.ı And you would find verbs likeIsrael defies President Bush.ı And it set up a collision between Israeland the United States that there are elements of collision, but deep downthere is not a collision. There is a greater collision, in my opinion,between the United States and the Arab world, than there is between theUnited States and Israel, but the press covered it as if it was a collisionstrictly between two democracies.

Ben Wattenberg: What happens, you turn on one of the all-news channelsparticularly and you, .Iıve sort of stopped watching them. I.I.

Marvin Kalb: I was about to say, donıt do it, Ben.

Ben Wattenberg: No, no. I mean you get two pictures. You get a picture ­and I donıt want to sound dismissive of this because these are greattragedies. But you get a picture of an Israeli café being bombed and thenthe ambulance coming and people crying. And then you get another picture,the Israelis retaliate and now in some strength moving tanks into Jenin andNablus and Bethlehem and whatever. But as you say, not in context, itıs thesame picture. They are, quote, ³covering² the news but they are not givingyou a context, they are not giving you an interpretation. And when they do,they would pair Mister A with Mister Z and Mister A would say, ³Well it goesback to what the Palestinians are doing.² And Mister Z says, ³No, it goesback to what the Israelis are doing.² How do you get around that issue of,first of all, of the news A, B, C, D-- and then balance?

Marvin Kalb: Very, very hard. And particularly hard for reason I mentionedbefore when covering the Middle East, very, very difficult, an awful lot ofemotion tied up in this. Thereıs been so much violence, so much hate thatitıs difficult to get a straight story. But in terms of journalistictechnique, the way journalism functions today, journalists require sources.Journalists like to function with access. Journalists like to have a freerun of things and God bless them and let it happen.

Ben Wattenberg: Right.

Marvin Kalb: Journalists find it easier to function at a democracy than inan autocracy or in a dictatorship because things are governmentallycontained, they canıt just move and do things, whereas in a democracytheyıre more likely to be able to move and do things. So they live and workand eat and sleep in Israel. They donıt sleep in the Palestinian-controlledareas; they very rarely eat there. Their whole lives are in Israel and theyexpect Israel to function exactly like the United States. They expectIsrael to be in the forefront of democratic procedures. And that iswonderful and it certainly should be and it is a democracy. But when youırein the midst of a war, itıs very difficult even for a democracy to function.I mean, for example, the word ­ Ben, let me just finish because Iıll forgetotherwise

Ben Wattenberg: No, Iıll forget.

Marvin Kalb: The word, ³occupy² is used a great deal. The Israeli forces³occupy,² the West Bank. The word occupy was not used when the Americansmoved into Afghanistan. We didnıt ³occupy² Afghanistan. But now the wordis being used, for example, on the Israeli side, partly because the Israelishave been in occupation of an area since Nineteen Sixty-seven so it sort ofslips in easily. But I think good journalists ought to think about whattheyıre saying. They speak today, Barbara Walters did not too long ago on adocumentary from Saudi Arabia. She referred to ³Palestine.² Well so far asI know, there is not yet a state of Palestine. There may well be at the endof this diplomatic and military effort, but there isnıt now. And I thinkjournalists have to deal with current reality. There is no Palestine, sodonıt say ³Palestine.² Occupation is a tricky term that the Palestiniansuse all the time and it evokes strong negative feelings and images. But youhave to ask yourself what is, in fact, happening.

Ben Wattenberg: Well, what kind of a role does, particularly, televisionnow play in one of these foreign policy crises? Theyıre called CNN wars,ıwhere itıs kind of like an American political campaign, you get your soundbite, you get his sound bite. How has that changed journalism from the wayyou used to cover it?

Marvin Kalb: Profoundly, profoundly. The way I used to cover it in theeighth century

Ben Wattenberg: Yeah, right.

Marvin Kalb: In those times we did have time to think about what it is thatwe were saying. Very little was live. You would sit down after beingsomewhere and write your story and think about it and talk to somebody,rewrite it, then put it out. Today, almost everything is live. Now somepeople are very good in live speech and some people are brilliant, but mostpeople arenıt. Most people are just people. And so when youıre.

Ben Wattenberg: Thatıs why we tape our shows. (laughter)

Marvin Kalb: When you do a live program, youıd better be right. You carrya huge responsibility on you as a reporter. Also, live coverage means notonly that the reporter has no time to think but the government official hasno time to think. You rely so much on faulty sourcing. If somebody sayssomething to you and you have a requirement to go on the air live, you areapt to say what that person just said to you before youıve had a chance tocheck on what the person said. All of these things now create a rushedtumult, which is very noisy and which sort of goes for news today, but in myjudgment, isnıt news, itıs noise.

Ben Wattenberg: How does the whole global situation shake out now? Youıvebeen around for a long time, what do you sense?

Marvin Kalb: Iıve never been as shaky about the times in which I live as Iam right now. I think that we are facing, as a nation, and I donıt mean toover-dramatize this, but really as a civilization, based on a certain set ofvalues. I think that we are facing what Condoleeza Rice often calls ³atipping moment,² ³a tipping point,² where everything seems up to that pointto be more or less in alignment. And then just on the other side of thatpoint, things seem to be falling out of control, splintering in a hundreddifferent directions. The United States of America right now is the onlycountry in the world, I hope weıll have allies in this, but the only countryin the world that can somehow or another resolve, settle, put a lid on,manage, the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It is not going to be solvedunless, in an area of the world that was once known for miracles, it canproduce yet another miracle and actually bring the Israelis and thePalestinians together. Because that kind of a togetherness, even if antsyin its relationship, but that kind of togetherness could not only producewonders for both people but be an economic stimulus for the whole region.And thatıs what the Saudis many years ago were frightened of; they donıtwant to lose their control. These are political institutions, Ben, and youhave studied them even more than I have. These are political institutionsthat, more than anything else, want to hold onto power. But they are not insync with the modern times. Saudi Arabia is, I hope, trying but itıs not insync. Jordan is trying but itıs not in sync. And Egypt isnıt even tryingthat much and itıs way out of sync.

Ben Wattenberg: And they see also this incredible sole super power, UnitedStates of America, making pronouncements.

Marvin Kalb: The President last week was trying to make a point. Iunderstand why he was trying to make it. He was trying to be consistentwith his new doctrine. He was trying to help the Arab world, what we callour ³Arab friends,² the Egyptians, the Jordanians and the Saudis. Iunderstand what he was trying to do; thatıs fine. But there are certainwords, ³I expect progress,² he said. ³I expect leadership,² he said. ³Iexpect them to heed my advice.² Come on. Thereıs a pomposity in thatlanguage that is unbecoming for the sole super power.

Ben Wattenberg: But it is a pomposity, if indeed it is a pomposity, thatcould only come from one man in the world today.

Marvin Kalb: That is true. There is one President of the United States andone United States. In a sense, Ben, so that I donıt get misunderstood, ifany country is to be a super power today, thank God it is the United Statesbecause we still have an important set of values, such as democracy and suchas individual freedom and such as a free press, that if other countries inthe world began to emulate, theyıd be better off and weıd be better off,too.

Ben Wattenberg: Marvin Kalb, thank you very much for joining us on ThinkTank. And thank you. Please, donıt forget to send us your comments viae-mail. For Think Tank, Iım Ben Wattenberg.

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